I would like to share the experience I gain from assisting people reviewing their diet plan. It is very common to people, especially ladies, over-estimate the amount of calorie they eat. When they are afraid of eating too much, they will skip meal or feeding themselves on what they considered “light” such as biscuits or soup. There is a tendency to have intake of low calorie in one meal but calorie-densed meal in other days. Some working moms also have a habit of eating the food leftover by kids. As people may never aware of these eating habits until they wrote them down in a food log.
The purpose of keeping a food journal is to help you taking a full and actual account of what you eat. You will be surprised at the disparity of what you think of the eating habit to what exactly happen. Memory sometimes is not reliable. While some people think they eat a lot of veggie, but turn out just two days out of a week and almost none in remaining days. Another issue is the variety of food may be very limited. Perhaps one may eat the same type of leafy vegetables but missed out a lot more of roots vegetables.
Keep a record at least for one week, inclusive of normal working days and weekend. Write down everything, food and beverage, that you eat. Include details such as how the food was prepared and which toppings or condiments you added. Measure the portions and keep the food labels as reference.
Make a comparison between the suggested daily intake in meal plan to your food journal and to find the disparity. Any disproportion of food intate? Too many eating out? Eating patterns differs from individuals. Some may be heavy snacks eater. Others may be serving size is more than one needs. Any of the following traits need our attention: skip meal, late meal, repetitive and high consumption of certain packaged food.
Before you start for meal plan, keeping a food log is a useful tool for you to honestly, and accurately record what you are eating regularly. If there is more than one of the above traits that drive you off course from the meal plan, the next stage is to make one change at a time. Keep logging in the progress of changing the dietary habit. You’ll be amazed how much improvement achieved when you look back the diary.
